Village Witches Rescue

• FuzzyOnyx babies, 09.28
  This litter of 9 week old kittens is from parents I've known for about two years. One tuxudo boy who is just bursting with personality, and three girls: an ocelot with white socks, a stripy tabby with white eyeliner, and a FUZZY! black. They are weaned, litter-trained, and romping around like wee little madmen.
• Tigerclan, 05.30 new pics
  This is the final litter from Tiger and Mama Tiger, which makes them limited edition! (Mama Tiger has been spayed, and we're working to catch and snip Tiger.) Tiger and Mama Tiger make wonderful babies (they previously gave us the Dryer Vent Gang, plus my Sebastian), and there are two left from this litter: a deeply neurotic lilac-point siamese girl, and a sleek shiny sweetheart with inky black fur. They get along very well with other cats, but both would be happiest in a quieter home than mine.

I'm Maggie, and I live in a apartment complex in the bad part of Richardson, TX. We have a drainage ditch of a creek and a wooded area behind us, which leads to a park with a small pond. This leads to a large feral cat population. My friends (Waterlylly and Leftie) and I have been rescuing and placing local cats for several years.

I think it was during the plague of baby birds (we made a lot of trips to the bird refuge that spring) that Waterlylly and I realized we had become the village witches. Waterlylly knew the apartment kids through her son. Whenever the kids found something hurt and helpless, they brought it to her, and eventually, to me. She, Leftie, and I have taken dying cats to the vet, abandoned baby birds (and ducks!) to the bird shelter, and stray kittens into our homes. Lots of stray kittens -- sometimes we get them in batches, sometimes we're lucky and just get one..

We've had more happy endings than sad, which is what keeps us going. We've found homes for over 30 cats and kittens, and we're working to spay/neuter and release the strays we feed.

You can always reach me at lynxfeather@yahoo.com.

~Maggie

• Tigerclan, spring 2006
  This is the final litter from Tiger and Mama Tiger, which makes them limited edition! (Mama Tiger has been spayed, and we're working to catch and snip Tiger.) Tiger and Mama Tiger make wonderful babies (they previously gave us the Dryer Vent Gang, plus my Sebastian), and this litter has all of their classic mixes: 2 siamese (a loving boy and a squirrely girl), 2 black (a boy and girl), and 1 stripybutt who is destined to be enormous, loving, and goofy. (We know his brothers.) The adorable siamese boy found a home, the stripybutt went home to live with big brother Xander, and the wee stretchy pantherman is mine.
• Zeebaclan, spring 2006
  This was a litter of 5, mother unknown, and it was a mix of kittens we don't often see in this area: 1 foofy gray & white affectionate girl boy, 1 striking tuxedo girl, and 3 black and white splotchies of various gender. The gray/white and the leader of the black/white kitties got adopted by a family who needed cats. The tuxedo girl is now riding around the country. The remaining 2 cow-colored kitties went to Lyl's, and proceeded to worm their way into the household.
• The Dryer Vent Gang, autumn 2005
  The Dryer Vent gang was the first litter from Tiger and Mama Tiger that I managed to catch, primarily because Mama Tiger decided the dryer vent was the perfect place to store them. Tiger is the alpha male of the local cats, Mama Tiger is his long-time girlfriend, and they make beautiful babies. One of their children, Baby Tiger, is one of my favorite strays. My lunatic Siamese boy, Sebastian, is one of theirs from a later litter. And we are fairly certain that Xander is one of theirs. It was a wonderful litter to nurture, and fortunately, all 4 of them went to friends, so I can watch them grow up.
• Tigerlily, mar 2005
  Tigerlily arrived on my back deck one night, reeking of smoke, and so hungry she couldn't stop growling. I thought this tiny tabby cat was an adolescent -- to my shock, she turned out to be 2 years old. She was the sweetest, most people-oriented foster cat I've ever had, and she went home with a lovely woman and her daughter, to a life of being loved and cuddled every day.
• Claudia, fall 2004
  Leftie found a tiny black cat crying in the bushes outside of her workplace and called Lyl. The plan was for her to be a foster cat, but she took over Lyl's heart and home in record time, and now terrorizes the other cats on a daily basis.
• Smidge, jun 2004
  Smidge came to me during one of the hardest years of my life. A tiny tuxedo cat, he gave me something to love and take care of when I desperately needed to be reminded that life is not always bad. I never had a harder time giving a kitten up to a new home, but the woman who took him was wonderful and I know he's happy.
• 3 unweaned kittens, 2003
  Lyl is our kitten expert, and she bottle-fed these little guys until they could graduate to actual food. She and her son nursed them to health and found them wonderful homes, and Xander, the runt of the litter, is now 17 pounds of pure cat. :)
• Max, oct 2002
  A beautiful, robust black-and-white cat, he followed me home on October 27th. He stayed for a few months, but never reconciled himself into being an indoor cat. I tried so hard, but I couldn't keep him from dashing out the front door. One day he never came home, and I pray he found another sucker (with fewer cats of their own) to take him in.
• Artemis, oct 2002
  A snowy-white kitten who appeared in the parking lot on October 16, skinny and terrified, yelling for help. She never really recovered from whatever happened to her, and she was always too spooky for me to think of placing her. I kept her until she died of sudden heart failure in spring 2004. She's one of my sad stories.
• Malachi, july 2002
  A single stray kitten that the ragbag children deposited in my arms. He looked like a hairy gargoyle! He was so beautiful and sweet, and Daddy Wes found his page and took him home.
• Leftie's Angels, july 2002
  A litter of 6 kittens, brought to Lyl in a shopping cart by a bunch of ragtag children. We had never seen such filthy kittens! FILTHY, flea-infested, undernourished kittens. Thank god and goddess they all pulled through, and we found them homes. (Four of them went to one exceptional home, and got to stay together.)
• Tatters' babies, april 2002
  Tatters was still half-wild for a long time, and often tried to dash out the door. She gave no signs at all of being in heat. One day, we realized that she was looking extra healthy, and the next day, she was a walrus! She gave birth to 5 perfect little cats who all found loving homes, and to everyone's surprise, she was the best mother ever. Now she's been spayed, and she's still my darling girl.
• Tatters, winter 2001
  Mama Bast's gift to me. I had managed to resist every cat and kitten to cross my threshold, because I had 4 cats of my own. But one night, I found a scraggly, frighteningly thin tortoiseshell yelling at my door. She growled constantly, even while she was eating, and she had been starved for so long that she could only eat a few mouthfuls at a time. I tried to resist her, but she was meant to be mine.
• Haggis, aka Mr Personality, aka He Pissed in the Teapot?
  Mr Personality was a huge tuxedo cat with ears that looked like a Scottish Fold's. (Turns out it was scarring -- poor baby!) After he made it quite abundantly clear that he wasn't interested in being an inside cat (hand to god, he pissed in Lyl's teapot), Lyl found him a farm to live on with people who adore him.
• Macavity's 6
  This was the last litter Mac had before we got her spayed. She scared us, because she had this litter in the storm drain, and didn't bring them to us until they were weaned. One day, she just dumped them on Lyl's porch and went away. This time we were ready with a cat trap, and we caught, spayed, and released her. Several years later, she moved across the cul-de-sac with me, and now makes my back deck her base of operations.
• Tulip
  Tulip was my favorite of the strays -- a big beautiful orange and white cat. He was strong orange, with a white tip to his tail, and he was the most friendly of the locals. One day when Lyl was gone, the kids came to my door in a panic. The local teenage hoodlums had nearly murdered him. We got him to the emergency clinic, and through the efforts of several people, managed to pay the bill. One of the people was a neighbor who was also feeding him and she took him inside and kept him.
• Macavity's 5
  This was her next litter. I had set up a shelter on my porch, which she and Marmalade (her beau) preferred because it provided shelter from the rain. I can't remember if she had this litter in the shelter or if she moved them there early, but as soon as they were weaned, she let us take them in. Unfortunately, we were stupid and didn't catch her before she got knocked up again.
• Kero & Taxco
  Macavity is a tiny black cat who started becoming a regular at Lyl's porch feedings. She was feral, and although Lyl managed to bring her inside with one of her early litters, she made it extremely clear that she didn't want to stay inside, and after that never got close enough to touch. Kero and Taxco were from 2 separate litters.